David Parker

Adjunct Associate Professor

DAVID PARKER began his career as a teenager tapdancing on the sidewalks of Boston. While attending Bard College, he was introduced to modern, post-modern and classical forms and began putting them all together. He has pursued an unusually diverse performance career which includes "downtown" dance, traditional modern, classical character roles, rhythm tap, experimental tap and singing and acting. At the heart of his work is a love of rhythmic form and the humor that flows from it. He has performed and choreographed internationally and his work has been commended by the New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Awards committee in 2002 for his collaboration with Dutch fashion designers Melanie Rozema and Jeroen Teunissen. In addition, he was a finalist at the International Choreographic Competition in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1994, received a special citation from the Kurt Jooss Awards jury led by Pina Bausch for his Bang and Suck (for which the company is named) in 2001, from the Nijinsky Awards in Monaco as an "emerging choreographer of distinction" in 2003, and was given a MOVE Award from Dance Theater Workshop at its final gala in 2010, an Art + Action Award from the Gina Gibney Dance Center in 2011 and a prize for his philanthropic work on behalf of Dancers Responding to Aids in 2004. Parker has made nearly 30 commissioned works for companies large and small, classical and contemporary, university groups, festivals and soloists throughout the United States and Europe. Highlights include Dylan Dog for 44 dancers of the Verona Ballet in Italy, 2 works for Groundworks Dance Theater in Cleveland, 2 for Summer Stages Dance Festival in Concord, MA, 2 for the Barnard Project at Dance Theater Workshop and New York Live Arts, 1 for the Sokolow Theater Dance Ensemble, for Juilliard's New Dances for the class of 2010 and for the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Alfred College, Northwestern University and Connecticut College. He has also been commissioned by The American Dance Festival, and The Yard as well as numerous times by Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project and DanceNow/NYC.
Parker is currently on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Barnard College, The Alvin Ailey School and Princeton University teaching dance composition at all four. Together with Risa Steinberg, he serves as mentor for Juilliard's Senior Production and is active as a mentor at Green Street Studio's Emerging Artist series in Cambridge, MA and at Summer Stages Dance Choreographer's Fellowship Project. He has been a member of the Bessie Awards Committee and regularly serves on granting and curatorial panels. He sits on the Boards of Danspace Project, and Green Street Studios and served as a board member for The Field for 12 years. He is a regular contributor to Dance Magazine and has recently written for The Brooklyn Rail as well. He is a frequent adjudicator for The American College Dance Festival Association and was recently one of the artist-curators at Danspace Project's much-vaunted Platform Series during which he programmed 4 weeks of events under the rubric Rhythm and Humor. He has also been guest curator at the Harkness Dance Center at the 92nd Street Y. In the last decade, Parker has found a new career as a guest artist performing with Sara Rudner (Dancing on View at the ICA), Christopher Williams (The Golden Legend), Doug Elkins (in five seasons as Liesl in Fraulein Maria), The New York Theater Ballet (Cinderella), Nicholas Leichter (The Whiz), Larry Goldhuber (The Seven Deadly Sins) and in work by Sara Hook, Kay Cummings, Lorraine Chapman, Fiona Marcotty Dolenga and Catherine Tharin.